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Cornelia Parker at work on Magna Carta (An Embroidery), Photograph by Joseph Turp

Stitching is a hot topic this month, with two exhibitions opening this month in London: Magna Carta (An Embroidery) by Cornelia Parker and Colin and Helen David: Not only when the moon shines: The Living Quarter.

Anne Tilby, one of our regular contributors to this magazine on a variety of subjects, has written a feature on her website, Big Frieze entitled Stitch in Time that looks at the detail of the exhibits and their topicality.

A mixed media designer and artist, Tilby is an experienced production set and costume designer for film, tv, theatre and opera has produced an impressive body of work during her career.

We love her work which always seems to have a startling, unexpected and wry flavour, witness her images of live models dressed in food, or her series of painted bottoms, or her image using fag ends, or perhaps her highly amusing images of Julian Clary, or her latest work Tortured Soles, an art rant about western foot-binding.

Like this:

The delicious red fruit used to be one of Britain’s most beloved. But are you one of those who think tomatoes don’t taste quite as good as they used to? This may be because three quarters of the tomatoes bought in this country are now imported.

British Tomato Week has been set up to raise awareness of flavoursome British tomatoes, and help spread the word that when it comes to choosing the best, buying fresh, home-grown British tomatoes is a great place to start.

Tomato Week afternoon tea at Lancaster, London

To celebrate British Tomato Week Lancaster London Hotel are offering a Tomato Week themed Afternoon Tea priced at £30 per person, which will include savoury delights made with the freshest British tomatoes, including Tomato bread, Tomato scones and Tomato sorbet. Looks yummy!

Island Grill restaurant on Hyde Park has created a special three course set menu, priced at £12.50 for two dishes or £15.50 for three courses.

However, like me, you might have some tomato plants on the windowsill or in a greenhouse. Many gardeners manage to grow them outside but up here in Cumbria the wind and lower temperatures mean indoors is the only option. I did try some outside last year but the plants were pretty much an unproductive experiment.

Two Ailsa Craig plants in the centre

So this year I purchased two Ailsa Craig plants. Noted for the exceptional flavour of its fruit, which ripens early in the season this well known gardener’s favourite produces medium sized tomatoes with a uniform size and shape and an excellent deep colour.

Ailsa Craig

Another popular tomato popular with gardeners and which has an RHS AGM*, Alicante, was available from a local nursery and I have placed both varieties in a glazed entry hall.

Alicante tomato

They are growing apace, in fact one Ailsa Craig has grown half an inch in 24 hours I noted this morning! I only know that because I marked the support strings yesterday just to see what rate of growth might be in the sunny and warm hall. I didn’t expect such a surge!

I have another three pots of a tomato Crimson Crush, a new entrant on the tomato market from Suttons in the conservatory that only has sun from about noon and I’ll be interested to see if there is any difference in growth rate. They are going into grow bags.

Crimson Crush

I know of course I may well be awash with tomatoes and there is a limit to how much time I want to spend bottling and making tomato puree, so much of the crop will go straight in the freezer in bags. To remove the skin easily I just dunk them in hot water, the skins slide off moreorless immediately.

If you are growing tomatoes let us know the variety and their progress … we will probably try different varieties next year.